Featherweight
13 Jul 2018

by Drew Rowsome -

There is a lot of information, a pun, and a descriptor packed into the title of Featherweight. But then there is a lot packed into the play Featherweight. Not only an uproarious comedy that had the audience in stitches, Featherweight also tackles some very heavy subjects that made for some squirm-inducing moments. Plus a couple of jump scares and a bar serving real alcohol.

The plot is a sitcom premise on steroids, riffing on American Gods, Cheers, Night Court and Underage Anal Sluts 2. Meek millennial Jeff has just been killed in a bike and truck collision, and his soul has been sent to The Paddock Tavern for judgement by Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. Anubis is having a personal/work crisis, hence so is her assistant Toth. Instead of weighing Jeff's heart against a feather, Anubis adds in his browser history. It is a clever conceit but it is only a jumping off point for more - zanier and profound - ideas and themes.

Playwright/director Tom McGee packs the script with one-liners and visual gags. But the laughs are in service of serious discussion on racism, misogyny, rape, father/son relationships, revenge porn and, particularly, complicity in all of the above. There are perhaps too many ideas but instead of being scattershot they ricochet, playing off each other and building. It also helps to confine the audience to the environs, temporarily a theatrical stage instead of a drunken one, of The Paddock Tavern. The action happens on all sides and from all directions with the inevitable interactions which are surprisingly entertaining.

The cast is uniformly excellent and their energy is barely contained by the four walls, certainly not by the fourth wall. Michael Musi (Late Night, Liver) fidgets and blusters as an everyman suddenly confronted with his potential guilt over a host of crimes. As his former obliviousness fades into dawning horror, Musi juggles empathetic, vileness and slapstick haplessness, sometimes all in the same sentence or pratfall. Amanda Cordner is a regal goddess who oozes sensuality and can't quite cover the cracks where her vulnerability is leaking through. She is also a master class in double takes.

But it is Kat Letwin (Late Night) who has the showy role as Toth who channels a multitude of characters during the trial. Letwin takes the gift of a role and plays it to the hilt without ever losing her dignity, the thread of the convoluted narrative, or a sense of reality. She is quite simply hilarious. Her final speech is the climax of Featherweight and is almost shocking how much the audience has invested emotionally in her comic character. That the ending is abrupt and inconclusive is secondary, we have been moved and given lots to think about.

Featherweight is produced by McGee and Kat Sandler, who comprise Theatre Brouhaha. Sandler, who also dramaturged, is familiar to most discerning theatre-goers and certainly anyone who reads this blog, so it is hard to resist comparing Featherweight to her work - there are a lot of similarities, in a very good way - but if they are to weighed against each other, the scale will not plummet. The funniest and most heartbreaking line I have experienced in a long time comes midway through Featherweight. Musi casually tosses out, "It smells like Honest Ed's," and the entire audience groaned, guffawed and then sighed sadly from somewhere deep inside before laughing again. Here's hoping that Featherweight has an afterlife ahead of it.